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Data in action
DCHS is committed to making data accessible and useful.
Most DCHS services are provided through partnerships with local organizations. DCHS is dedicated to sharing information with its provider partners and working with them to use data to spark change and inform programming and policy decisions.
Click on one of the three stories below to learn more about how DCHS has worked to share back information, explore opportunities, and identify next steps in collaboration with funded providers.
Shifting Narrative: Child Care Workers Shape Research and Insights in a Wage Boost Pilot
Child care is essential to families and our local economy. Despite their expertise, child care workers remain among the lowest paid sectors, leading to high turnover, economic insecurity, and unstable care options for families. The Best Starts for Kids Child Care Wage Boost Pilot (or Wage Boost Pilot) invests in child care workers and centers their voices and expertise in both program design and research. By doing so, Best Starts for Kids hopes to inform a path toward a sustainable child care sector that supports worker well-being and affordable consistent care for families.
Child care workers have played a key role in shaping the values, design elements and overall implications of the Wage Boost Pilot. During the pilot’s design phase, workers were engaged through insight circles and one-on-one interviews that resulted in co-creation of learning questions, logic model, and approaches for worker enrollment. The Best Starts for Kids team also ran an open process to recruit child care workers to serve on a multi-year workgroup that considers regional narrative change and learning. By engaging workers in these and other areas of design, the Wage Boost Pilot strives to create a lasting impact on the child care sector and result in learnings for the broader community and future directions of the work. The Urban Institute, in partnership with Cardea Services, is evaluating the impact of this pilot on child care programs and their workers. More information about the evaluation can be found here.
Actions resulted in:
- Child care worker insight circles led to defined learning goals, research questions, and a logic model that reflects what is known and what they would like to learn from the Wage Boost Pilot
- Child care workers participated in interviews to share what equitable and fair enrollment could look like for the Wage Boost Pilot. This resulted in a representative, segmented lottery to enroll facilities and workers across King County
- Workgroup members began their first convenings in December 2024 and continued in 2025 to prepare for the launch of the Wage Boost Pilot
Next Steps
- Workgroup members will work together with the Wage Boost Pilot research team to analyze and make meaning of the results of the first workforce experience survey
- Child care workers will be invited to participate in focus groups to share about their experiences in the field, and learn from workers who are both receiving and not receiving a wage boost
Following the communities’ lead to improve the behavioral health system
Black, indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC), and refugee and immigrant people living in King County often face a behavioral health system largely built around mainstream, Western-centric medical service options that do not fit their cultural needs. The King County Behavioral Health and Recovery Division (BHRD) initiated the “Be Heard” Listening Project to partner with culturally centered, community-based organizations to gather feedback focused on the behavioral health needs of their communities and learn about the strengths, challenges, and opportunities for improving behavioral health supports. Using community-driven behavioral health grants, BHRD funded 14 organizations to hold listening sessions and interviews about mental health and substance use disorders within their communities. Together, partners completed 106 listening sessions and interviewed 543 individuals.
Community members often discussed trauma, particularly from war in their home countries, displacement, migration, and adaptation to their new country. They also identified the importance of culture and spirituality within the context of mental health and substance use conversations. Listening session participants highlighted generational differences in perceptions of mental health and openness to discussing mental health for fear of bringing shame or stigma on their family or community. Language access was identified as one of the biggest barriers to getting support for behavioral health needs. Other barriers included the lack of providers from similar cultural backgrounds, the lack of knowledge about where to go for support, the cost of services, transportation, and the lack of culturally relevant services and service types that resonate with their communities.
Communities expressed a strong desire to continue conversation about mental health and the importance of connection—both with each other and with mental health resources. Due to the pervasiveness of stigma around mental health and substance use in many communities, culturally centered wellness services and community-led education was perceived as necessary and important to the health of the whole community. Participants stressed the critical need for behavioral health services that are culturally responsive, developed by and for their community, and provided by individuals from similar cultures.
Actions resulted in:
- DCHS published the Be Heard: Community Voices about Mental Health and Wellness report online in January 2025. A two-page Be Heard Infographic is also available in multiple languages.
- Findings were presented by the report’s authors to the participating organizations at a final community event, as well as with DCHS and BHRD leadership.
Next steps:
- Information gathered from these listening sessions will be used to inform investments in behavioral health, including MIDD, the local behavioral health sales tax that helps to expand access to treatment.
- Learnings from this effort will elevate the needs and voices of under-recognized communities and will help guide efforts to improve County-directed behavioral health planning, programming, and service delivery.
Strengthening the transparency of our data relationships
In 2024, DCHS, in partnership with Public Health Seattle & King County (PHSKC) and the King County Office of Equity, and Racial and Social Justice, convened several meetings with community partners to develop a shared understanding about how we all collect, protect, and use data about the people we serve. These conversations were one part of DCHS’ participation in the Actionable Intelligence for Social Policy’s (AISP) Equity in Practice Learning Community. This learning collaborative supported local and state governments to explore new ways to center community voice and racial equity in decisions about data use. DCHS has been making extensive investments in our data capacity and technology. These conversations with community partners are an important early step in a longer-term vision to better center equity in our collection and management of individual-level data.
In spring 2024, DCHS and PHSKC convened seven community-based organizations that serve diverse populations involved in multiple systems, including the criminal legal, homeless response, and behavioral health systems. King County staff held three in-person meetings with staff from partner organizations to discuss how data about the people they serve is collected, protected, and used.
These conversations revealed that both the County and community partners share many of the same fundamental values and commitments when it comes to client data: being client centered, protecting confidentiality, minimizing harm, and making sure data is collected or shared for purposes that directly benefit clients. Participants identified common challenges balancing the need to prioritize benefits to those served with the necessity of having sufficient data to design and implement effective service systems. Participants also highlighted opportunities to improve communication and transparency about what happens to data that comes into the County from community.
Actions resulted in:
- County staff shared summaries with community partners and DCHS/PHSKC leadership, describing what they learned and suggesting potential improvements.
- County staff continued planning with community partners to prioritize actionable next steps the County could take to better empower organizations and individuals to make informed choices about the management of their data.
Next steps:
- County staff began a longer-term project to develop new information resources about how DCHS and PHSKC collect, protect, and use individual-level data.
- These resources are being designed collaboratively with community partners to ensure that information and formats are useful and accessible to provider staff and the people they serve.